wellbeing

pational A black president in the White House, a global depression

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not known for the best part of a century and the Japanese

c
are going to the moon – the times they are changin’ and

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O ards
business had better catch up. There’s a revolution in wellness
coming and those companies built on fear, threat and
control may soon be too sick to survive it. Revolution, you
say? Doesn’t that mean anarchy? Dictatorship? Bad beards?

The Coming

Haz
Before you grab your Che Guavara T-Shirt and copy of ‘Das
Republic’, let me explain...

Revolution
in corporate For more than 200 years, companies have
been built like profit machines. Their top-
ultimately means that long-term exposure
to negative occupational environments can
will be demanding healthy spirit-based
environments that are people-driven,

Wellness down management systems were designed

to standardise and control, encouraging the
retention of rigid organisational structures
and archaic management practices that saw
writer Michael Stevens revenue come first and people’s needs come
second. Thankfully, the growing public trend
towards wellness, health and spirituality has
expanded beyond the sphere of hippies,
gurus and spiritual quacks and exploded
into the global consciousness. The result?
More and more employees are realising that
a business with healthy profits can still be a
very sick place to work.
LOOKING BACK
During the industrial revolution the average
workday was between 13 and 15 hours, the
work week often seven days and children
as young as seven commonly cleaned
machinery because they could crawl into
smaller spaces than adults. What seemed
normal at other historical epochs today
seems cruel, exploitative and even criminal.
In 50 years time, when we look back at the
businesses of today, perhaps we will feel
unicycle businessman outdoor balance ©istockphoto.com/ZoneCreative
similar bewilderment at companies that
built their fortunes on stress, anger and little
appreciation of the connection between
emotional and physical wellness.
The Role of Peptides
Peptides are short chains of amino acids
that communicate emotions in the physical
form. They are secreted by glands and are
distributed throughout the body, attaching
to receptors in all the major organs. If a
person is habitually angry or stressed, for
example, the anger or stress peptide will be
repeatedly released into the body and stored
by the receptor. In short: negative emotions
transform into a physical reaction. This
result in extreme physical dysfunction.
If you want proof, here it is. In 1973, Dr.
Grossarth-Maticek conducted a self-regulation
test with almost six thousand 40-66 year-old
German participants. The test measured
whether people were able to create a positive
sense of wellbeing in their life by adapting
negative habits, behaviors and influences.
15 years later, quite incredibly, 86 percent
of those people who ranked themselves as
highly adaptable were still alive compared
to only 1.6 percent who ranked themselves
as unadaptable. Indeed, higher death
rates from cancer, coronary heart disease
and virtually all other causes correlated
directly with lower self-regulation scores.
Dr. Grossarth-Maticek showed that people
who cannot adapt to negative influences live
approximately eight years less than those who
can. It proves what many of have suspected
for a long time. Companies that are stressful,
fear generating, shaming environments are
poisoning their employees. Fact.
The Wellness Revolution
The modern business leader is as responsible for
creating a healthy occupational environment
as providing the right safety gear. In future,
people are increasingly going to naturally select
companies that nurture them emotionally and
spiritually, not stress them out. Sounds simple
enough but for environments to change,
business leaders first need to realise that the
occupational environments they have created
aren’t up to scratch and that wellness policies
aren’t just a passing fad.
New Business Models
In the not-too-distant-future, businesses
are going to find it increasingly difficult to
hire the ‘best’ people because employees
not ego-based companies that are profit-
driven. Consequently companies seriously
pursuing a long-term future will need to seek
professional guidance to cure their spiritual
ills in the same way that they once hired
TQM and ISO experts to fix their systems.
no quick fix
Wellness programmes are a great start
but there is a key difference between well
companies and companies that are merely
investing in wellness programs. “So many
companies are jumping on the wave of
wellness but few of them are learning
to surf,” agrees world renowned healer
and holistic consultant Roger Moore. “In
many companies wellness is skin deep but
wellness, by definition, is concerned with
everything that makes a person whole.”
Moore (whose client list includes Ma-
donna, U2 and Sting) describes a shift from a
‘What’s in-it-for-me?’ culture to ‘What can I do
for you?’ culture. “The profit-focused business
is a fearful business because it is motivated
by survival and destroying opponents,” says
Moore. “The alternative is a business focused
on achievement. When people are aligned,
entrained and working for something that is
more emotionally appealing than profit, the
synergy created is simply awe-inspiring. If we
could take our eye off the bottom line for a
moment, we would see the incredible power
to be explored within higher ideals.”
This implies that a ‘well’ business is
one that creates the right environment be-
cause they understand human needs, not
because it will affect their bottom line. This
is illustrated by statistics recorded by the
National Business Group on Health in 2008,
which indicated that while companies with
wellness programs increased productivity

112 AsiaSpa 2009 2009 AsiaSpa 113

 wellbeing
by eight percent, the resulting increase in
morale was 56 percent.
changing values
A recent report conducted by the society for
Human Resources Management in the US
declared that 62 percent of companies are
now offering wellness programs. This trend
is supported by employees across the globe
and in 2003 the Association of Occupational
Health Nurses Inc. reported that more than 50
percent of those surveyed stated they would
remain at their current job if their employer
offered a health and wellness programme.
“Wellness should become an essential part of
new business models. Successful businesses
will one day rank staff wellbeing alongside
the other drivers of a successful business
– including financial profit and customer
satisfaction,” testifies Bryan Hoare, Director of
Wellness at Six Senses Destination Spa.
A Spiritual Connection
Renowned author Dr. Steven Covey
once said, “We are not human beings
on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual
beings on a human journey.” One of the
greatest challenges of business is to make
occupational environments more ‘human’.
114 AsiaSpa 2009
“There needs to be a paradigm shift
in the way employers take care
of their workers”
When asked how this might come about,
Hoare says, “There needs to be a paradigm
shift in the way employers take care of their
workers, not a top down approach – but an
all encompassing approach where care really
means having empathy, creating actionable
programs, leading wellness from the top,
ensuring that people get the right levels of
physical activity, stress management support,
healthy eating options and guidance,
education in a variety of wellness related
arenas, developing communication skills,
promoting their emotional intelligence
and inspiring care for each other and the
development of a business culture where
wellness is absolutely essential for the
business to operate.”
Wellness within Wellness
No other business sector has greater potential
to be wellness revolution leaders than the spa
and wellness industry – particularly in Asia. It
is absurd that Asia should fall behind the North
American and European wellness trend when
we consider that its spiritual traditions have for
millennia been steeped in generating personal
peace and contentment. Asia needs only apply
the power innate within its own heritage
to realise that its companies are sitting on a
Work Life Balance signpost ©istockphoto.com/ RTimages
competitive gold mine that is the next quantum
leap in the way all businesses will run.
Getting Philosophical
Buddha said “If you knew what I know
about the power of giving, you would not
let a single meal pass without sharing it
in some way.” What a powerful concept
to extend to business. By engaging and
including people, motivating and inspiring,
developing and spiritually exploring,
the potential of a workforce expands
exponentially compared with the dated one-
dimensional environments of the past. There
is a fundamental difference in philosophy
between a business organised around a
return on salaries and a business investing
in people. One gives because it wants its
money back. The other gives because it
knows the power of giving.
Everything a business does expands
out from this philosophical choice. It is not
an easy choice for minds that have until
now, been locked into management, not
wellbeing. While some leaders may not
see the other side of the chasm, those who
have their eyes fixed firmly on the horizon,
can see a horizon of human potential that
stretches on forever. And it feels good.